1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a vacuum cleaner, and more particularly, to a dust collecting apparatus for a vacuum cleaner, which collects dust from a surface to be cleaned along With drawn-in air drawn-in through a suction nozzle using a suction force generated from a suction motor, filters air drawn in together with dust, and discharges the filtered air to the outside of the vacuum cleaner.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, dust collecting apparatuses for vacuum cleaners are divided into dust collecting apparatuses using dust bags and bagless dust collecting apparatuses in which dust bins are used semi-permanently. Modern vacuum cleaners mainly include bagless dust collecting apparatuses in which dust bins are used semi-permanently. Such bagless dust collecting apparatuses separate dust from a surface to be cleaned from drawn-in air using vacuum pressure generated between a suction nozzle and the surface to be cleaned, collect the separated dust, filter air from which the dust has been separated, and discharge the filtered air to the outside of the vacuum cleaner.
If a predetermined amount of dust is collected in such a dust collecting apparatus, a user may separate the dust collecting apparatus from a vacuum cleaner and empty the dust collecting apparatus. In this situation, if the dust collecting apparatus has a small size, a user may experience inconvenience due to the frequency with which the dust collecting apparatus needs to be emptied.
In order to solve user inconvenience, Korean Patent Registration No. 634805 and Japanese Open Patent Application No. 2007-20769 disclose dust collecting apparatuses which compress dust collected in dust collecting chambers.
Such dust collecting apparatuses include dust compression plates elastically supported by the dust collecting apparatuses, and ascending/descending members capable of applying power to the dust compression plates. When a user presses the ascending/descending member to move the dust compression plate up or down, dust collected in the dust collecting chamber may be compressed, and thus space available for dust collection may be increased.
Users usually clean the filters of dust collecting apparatuses when emptying dust bins. If a user uses a vacuum cleaner employing a conventional dust collecting apparatus, the user may frequently empty a dust bin, and accordingly may also frequently clean the filter, except for the situation in which a user separates a dust collecting apparatus from a main body of a vacuum cleaner and then cleans a filter, regardless of removing dust from a dust bin.
Accordingly, the period between cleaning operations of the filter of the conventional dust collecting apparatus is long for the reasons described above, and thus the efficiency of the filter in filtering fine dust particles contained in air from which the dust has been separated may be reduced. Additionally, pressure inside the dust collecting apparatus increases due to the difficulty of smoothly discharging air, causing a decrease in the suction force to draw in dirt from a surface to be cleaned.